YMMV / Friday Night Funkin': Mario's Madness

• Accidental Aesop:
  • Don't weasel your way out of a high-stakes agreement you and the other party mutually agreed to, or else the consequences of doing so will come back to bite you. Daddy Dearest wanted to make off with all of the money he got from a hefty deal he cut with M in the video games market, so he resorted to imprisoning his business partner in a Super Mario Bros. cartridge, and left him to rot. Because Daddy Dearest took this shortcut to backing out of M's deal, the latter ends up wanting to murder his daughter out of Revenge by Proxy, which M succeeds in doing alongside killing said daughter's boyfriend. Similarly, after Boyfriend finishes the second song, "Starman Slaughter", he flees from an enraged M with Girlfriend, breaking off M's challenge he accepted just two songs ago. This act is what gets them killed by M come the final song "All-Stars".
  • Vengeance is worthless, especially if the motive behind it festered for decades, and it never ends well for everybody, including the grudge holder. The mod's Downer Ending comes from M succeeding in his unflinching Revenge by Proxy against Daddy Dearest by murdering Girlfriend and Boyfriend. M walks away feeling nothing, perhaps even grief, instead of the satisfaction he thought finally doing the deed would grant him. Because M carried out his revenge, he condemned himself to aimlessness and being alone again, and gets no closure, rendering his victory moot.
• Accidental Innuendo: Near the beginning of "Dictator", Secret Histories Mario says that Boyfriend tried to "fuck him". Of course, he was referring to Boyfriend swindling him out of the Kickstarter money (as in fucking him over), but it can definitely come off as referring to something else.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Was the "we" from Devil Mario's Badass Boast referring to the Boos possessing Mario or the mod's Rogues Gallery? After all, the mod ends with Horror Mario-as-Ultra M killing Boyfriend and Girlfriend, and shortly before he does so he states that the other opponents in the mod, Devil Mario included, are his puppets.
  • A scrapped secret final song that would be unlocked by FC-ing All-Stars actually brings one to another mod, namely V.S. TABI Ex Boyfriend. In the scrapped song, Daddy Dearest would have pinned the blame for Girlfriend's death on Boyfriend and killed him. Given how Tabi is another boyfriend of Girlfriend's who was screwed by Daddy Dearest, were the crimes Tabi was accusing Girlfriend of actually a result of her being an Unwitting Pawn to her father?
• Awesome Levels:
  • “I Hate You” is put in high regard for the music (which has a neat reference to the athletic theme of Super Mario World), the background changing as the song progresses, and his unique and interesting gimmick.
  • “Golden Land” is also put in high regard for the song, art that really feels like higher quality GameBoy sprites, GB pulling a One-Winged Angel, and how defeating him unlocks the Warp Zone in V1. It still qualifies in V2 due to the vocals and sprites being improved from the old version too!
  • As of V2's release, the Superboss gained after beating the main story, "Unbeatable", became by far the most popular part of the update, being a brutal 10-minute gauntlet with a banger song all based on the infamous "YOU CANNOT BEAT US" Nintendo commercial.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: During "I HATE YOU", Girlfriend is in the background wearing a version of Mario's outfit, complete with a G on her cap. Where she got the outfit is never explained, and she never wears it again, made all the more notable when this is one of the only songs she doesn’t appear disturbed by the opponent. V2 only adds to the weirdness of it by having an active plot, as well as giving Boyfriend his own Mario suit and having them kept on for "Dark Forest".
• Bizarro Episode: Irregularity Isle as a whole, and most of the songs in Content Cosmos, come right out of nowhere, have no actual influence on the plot, are very over the top and zany compared to the majority of the songs in the mod, and once these worlds are done, nothing from there is brought up again. The only exceptions in Content Cosmos' case are "Dictator" and "No Hope", where Secret History Mario and Devil Mario's chromatics get imitated by Ultra M in "All-Stars".
• Breather Level: The V1 version of "Alone" is a rather simple and slow paced song in-between the Interface Screw heavy "I HATE YOU" and the fast paced and more note dense "Apparition". The V2 version maintains this status, remaining fairly simple (albeit far longer at 4 and a half minutes), and coming after That One Level Mario Sing and Game Rhythm 9.
• Creepy Cute: Turmoil. While yes, he is a gluttonous murderer who kills and eats any enemy he comes across, his small stature and big eyes can’t help but endear the player.
• Crosses the Line Twice: “I HATE YOU” features Luigi with a Nightmare Face and is well known for his hatred of Mario with the main mechanic of his song referencing how he was thrown into lava during the story he is based off of. Girlfriend, for whatever reason, is wearing a sexy version of Mario’s outfit, vibing in the background as she usually does and notably one of the only times she isn’t visibly distressed in the mod. This Luigi’s probably not amused by her cosplay. In V2, the song ends with Boyfriend successfully knocking Luigi into the lava… and then flipping Luigi off.
• Cry for the Devil: While Ultra M's torment of Boyfriend and Girlfriend is utterly abhorrent, with it culminating with him killing the two off at the end, the end credits make it hard to not feel sorry for him, as he feels as though his victory had become hollow, and the only humans he had ever seen in years are now dead. He even has an entire Lonely Piano Piece to accompany him in the end credits.
  The stage is set, but our players have all gone home
  Our great production, our world, and yet I'm alone
  You've met your maker, I've said my peace
  So why won't this feeling cease?
• Ending Aversion: While the mod itself is by no means hated, a lot of fans were understandably upset at the contentious ending, which has Boyfriend and Girlfriend get Killed Off for Real and Pico still trapped in the game in fear for his life. The fact that the interpretation of the mod being a play isn't canon as Marco stated despite him saying that he isn't against it only adds fuel to the fire.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Upon the release of V2, Turmoil has quickly become a fan favourite among the fandom, in part due to the unique concept of his character, his song, and especially his surprisingly cute design. It’s understandable that most people think that his rewrite and redesign is an instance of They Changed It, Now It Sucks!.
• Fanon:
  • There are multiple people who believe M is actually Mario himself. These people use the fact Daddy Dearest is referred simply as "Dearest" in M's backstory, and that when he reverts from his Ultra M transformation during "A Mad World Without You", his voice is notably different from the one he has in the rest of the mod. Of course, this headcanon was mostly made to make Daddy Dearest even worse, as the people who believe this fanon say only a Complete Monster could turn a beloved mascot like Mario into a nightmarish entity like Horror Mario or Ultra M.
  • Based on how they interact in the FunkKast trailer, IHY Luigi and GB are often portrayed to have a Sitcom Arch-Nemesis dynamic, with fans putting them in situations like parodying Mario's Ristorante.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Marco has stated that the ending images in the credits (which imply the events of the mod were a play) are not canon to the story. People understandably upset at the mod's Downer Ending tend to ignore this.
• Fountain of Memes: Mr. L and Overdue have become breeding grounds for all kinds of shitposts, usually gag lyrics.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • MX letting Boyfriend and Girlfriend live at the end of "Power Down" makes a lot more sense when you realize he only targets children, and both BF and GF are actually 19 years old. Note this only applies in V1 since he tears Girlfriend in half near the end of the song and stomps Boyfriend into paste if he loses.
    • However, this out of character action could be also seen as a hint towards the fact that he and the rest of the mods opponents are husks controlled by M.
  • Fitting the two being pulled into a Mario game, Boyfriend and Girlfriend have the standard Mario three lives each, which all get used throughout the mod; Boyfriend loses his first while playing the game in the starting cutscene right before being pulled into it, both he and Girlfriend are blown up by Secret Histories Mario at the end of "Dictator", Girlfriend is torn in half in "Powerdown" before reappearing in "Demise", and both have their last lives expended in "All-Stars", leading to the mod's Downer Ending.
  • While it might seem like a huge coincidence that All Star's second act's opponents - Omega and the Trio - all have poses and even idles that involve Giving Someone the Pointer Finger, or at least are constantly keeping their eyes and aim at Boyfriend, watching it again and knowing what happens next makes the recurring riff of the poses more meaningful: they are trying to keep Boyfriend distracted - either through goading him into rap battling more or by making sure his focus is set on them - so Ultra M has more time to kill Girlfriend.
  • Boyfriend's last five opponents before the final boss all foreshadow how the finale will play out, with the ones in Hellish Heights being blatant about it while the ones in Classified Castle are more subtle. It's easy to see how Mr. Virtual using Girlfriend's image to distress Boyfriend and MX straight-up tearing GF in half can relate to what happens in "All-Stars", but also, the Mario Costume is a literal representation of how Ultra M is controlling the other opponents, Classified Luigi being a puppeted dead body foreshadows GF's fate in a more subtle way, and Stanley plays upon the existential dread that Ultra M expresses during the credits song. Even Promo Mario's smile getting wiped off his face after seeing Luigi drown reflects how Boyfriend's signature cocky grin is gone for good after GF's final death.
    • Actually, the foreshadowing to Horror Mario-as-Ultra M's ultimate victory can be traced to the Content Cosmos. Halfway during his song, Devil Mario says "Your struggle is pointless... we have already won". Also, he's pretty much the Knight of Cerebus of the mod; all opponents after him are purely creepy enemies with dark songs, except DJ Hallyboo, who has a fairly upbeat song. And as noted below, Devil Mario is one of Ultra M's puppets. So ask yourself knowing Horror Mario wins in the end: when Devil Mario spoke in the middle of his song, were the Boos talking... or Horror Mario?
    • "Dictator" also foreshadows Ultra M's victory. Secret History Mario's song pretty much sums up the whole mod. Fittingly, the confrontation with Secret History Mario is the middle point of the mod, and a motif from "Dictator" can be heard in Act 4 of "All-Stars", much like with "No Hope".
  • How M views Boyfriend and Girlfriend is reflected in their final fates. Girlfriend, the daughter of his nemesis and the one he wanted to kill in the first place, is made to suffer and eventually strung up in a mocking puppet-like form. Boyfriend, a bystander who M actually seems to respect a bit, is killed suddenly and instantly, taken by surprise so he has no time to process the pain before he passes.
  • While Ultra M states that all of the previous opponents Boyfriend faces are all his puppets, the only opponent icons that show up in Act 4 are the ones from the Woodland of Lies, Hellish Heights, Classified Castle, Secret Histories Mario, Devil Mario, and Mr. Sys. All of them have the common trait of internally being scary with basically little to no intentional comedy, befitting the creepypasta entity Ultra M represents.
  • At the end of the Superboss song "Unbeatable", Boyfriend's health has been cut down so far that even perfectly hitting the last 2 hold notes only brings him up to 50%, staying true to the song's title as he technically never 'won' the battle. However, there's a more subtle factor that also makes the challenge 'unwinnable' in a sense; in both the original commercial and the end of the song, Mr. Sys challenges the player to 'score 1,000,000'. The maximum possible score you can get is 870,450 for hitting every note perfectly, meaning that you're also guaranteed to fail that challenge.
  • Speaking of, all three of the opponent's icons in "Unbeatable" have a small Nintendo icon next to them, with it being crossed out when the battle is in Boyfriend's favor. The Commercial Gang claims that Nintendo is unbeatable, so if they're being beaten, they aren't Nintendo.
• Fridge Sadness:
  • While what happened to Beta Luigi was sad, one can only wonder how the loss of Mario affected the rest of the Mushroom Kingdom. How would the Toads, Princess Peach, Yoshi, and all of Mario's other friends react to the news? How would Bowser react? Would he just take the opportunity to rule the kingdom, be sad for the loss of his enemy, or simply be angry that he wasn't the one to end Mario?
    • Some silver lining is provided by DJ Hallyboo's VA, Juno Songs, who believes at least Peach and Toad would try to comfort Luigi on his loss. So while they probably would take the loss of Mario badly, especially Peach, for whom Mario is The Lost Lenore, at least they don't blame Luigi for it, so for all his self-loathing, Luigi is not really alone in this.
  • While it's unknown how he'll react to Boyfriend's death, Daddy Dearest is not gonna be happy when he finds out about his daughter's death.
  • With the revelation in "All-Stars" that M has always been the opponent in every song, combined with the credits song "It's a Mad World Without You" showing his emotional vulnerability regarding the entire affair, it suggests that the different opponents are his attempts to reflect on aspects of his life. Turmoil's endless hunger for an enemy, I HATE YOU and Mr. L's vindictive natures towards perceived slights and genuinely callous actions, Beta Luigi's feelings of loneliness (and possibly betrayal), and Secret History Mario's contempt for those who cut him out of a deal... even the goofier characters like Somari, Grand Dad and Day Out Mario seem to represent his desire to be friends with someone for once, even if it'd be tinged with bitterness and a lack of authenticity, because it'd be better than living alone as he has for the past thirty years.
  • In a more specific case, Stanley's appearance as the creator of the mod's penultimate opponents omits a vital plot point from his home series — namely, that the threat he represented was neutralized long ago and most of his torment was in fact a projection of Jim's own personal traumas from a time when Stanley was a threat, which goaded him into keeping the AI alive to sate his curiosity and pain. But in Jim's absence, it is M who establishes a connection with Stanley and learns that to cling so tightly to the wounds of the past is to suffer endlessly.
• Friendly Fandoms: With its inspiration Vs Sonic.exe, as they are both creepypasta-themed horror mods based on two of the most iconic video game franchises. Plus Lord X and MX being canonically friends strengthens the relationship of both fanbases.
• Good Bad Bugs: No Party's contentious word-writing gimmick (see That One Attack below) bases its health drain on the percentage you get after the timer elapses. If you get 60%, you lose 40% of the meter's max HP. If you get 30%, you lose 70%, and if you get 0% you lose 100%. However, due to the way it's programmed, people have discovered that you can just scribble over the words and still succeed—the percentage you get isn't based on how accurate your lines are but by how much of the word you cover. Additionally, since the percentage gets modified a little (drawing a little bit of the word will still give you 0%, and most relatively-accurate traces will still land around 60%, suggesting that there's some kind of grading curve), it's technically possible to draw so accurately that the game gives you over 100% and heal you instead.
• Heartwarming Moments: At the very last stretch of "Demise", Girlfriend sweeps in with her wings and grabs Boyfriend's wrist before he can fall on the Bottomless Pit along with MX - a moment capped further by Boyfriend's initial confusion being replaced with a relieved smile once he realizes Girlfriend is Back from the Dead. It does take a fast shift into both Nightmare Fuel and Funny Moments when MX hops back and Girlfriend (understandably) freaks out, but a bit of the heartwarming factor remains when you notice that Boyfriend stops crying after the rescue. Unfortunately, both Boyfriend and Girlfriend ultimately end up Killed Off for Real by the end of the mod anyway.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: It has not gone unnoticed that coincidentally, this mod isn't the first one to feature a black-and-white character named Costume who appears in a song called "The End".
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Fuck Daddy Dearest, the whole Mushroom World hates him^ExplanationA common piece of fanon is that M is actually Mario himself after he was cursed by Daddy Dearest. This fanon led to a snowclone of the "Fuck Daddy Dearest, all my homies hate him" meme where Daddy Dearest is Public Enemy #1 in the Mushroom World, seen as even worse than Bowser, who himself did a lot of nasty things, ask Kamek! The feeling intensified after the people hear the post-credits song, in which M feels guilt for killing Boyfriend and Girlfriend rather than satisfaction for succeeding to carry out his revenge, as fans blame Daddy Dearest for everything M did.
  • "WHAT KIND OF APOLOGIES ARE THESE?! I CAN'T ACCEPT THIS!"^ExplanationAfter the release of V2, it was revealed that it's possible to edit the text registered during "No Party", and this has brought some... interesting results, to say the least. When Juno Songs, Hallyboo's VA, saw this going on, he decided to do a small Twitter skit with Hallyboo complaining about Boyfriend not taking the matter seriously.
  • yo soy luigi ^ExplanationA Spanish Gag Dub of Overdue, mainly getting popular due to Stylistic Suck of the lyrics and audio. This has led to multiple other joke covers of the other songs of the mod, most of which having Mario Madness somewhere in the song.
    • Homophobic Overdue ^ExplanationAnother Gag Dub, this time painting Mr. L as homophobic.
  • It's also common to put Overdue over images of people or characters with their backs turned to the camera.
  • ONE DAY I FOUND MARIO ^{Explanation (NSFW)}Yet another Gag Dub, this time of I Hate You, consisting of Luigi recounting a time he walked in on Mario having sex with Waluigi.
  • I HATE YOU Luigi motivating Hypno^Explanation In the FunkKast trailer, IHY!Luigi gives a massive Take That! to Twitter drama and the impatient audience. This happened exactly on the day after BanDubs announced that Friday Night Funkin' Lullaby was uncancelled. Cue memes on the Mario's Madness cast, IHY!Luigi in particular, motivating the Pokémon pastas either through pep talks or the latter simply admiring the former's determination.
  • COME NOW, TAKE THE STEP, DON’T LOOK BACK, THERE’S NOTHING LEFT FOR YOU BEYOND THE VEIL. YOU’VE TRIED, AND YET, YOU FAILED TO SAVE HER. CLAWS UPON YOUR HEART RIP AND TEAR YOUR SOUL APART. YOU’VE LOST THE GAME, IT’S ALWAYS THE SAME WHEN YOU STAND BEFORE A GOD!^ExplanationAs depressing as "All-Stars" Act 3 is, Ultra M's lyrics are incredibly catchy, and can easily be put in the mouth of a villain whose machinations led to the hero's love interest dying. Bonus points if the villain does actually have a god complex.
• Moment of Awesome:
  • Once Act 4 of "All-Stars" rolls around, how does Boyfriend cope with Girlfriend's death and his subsequent meltdown after fighting her puppeteered corpse back in Act 3? He does the musical equivalent of Shut Up, Hannibal! in response to Ultra M asking him to give up and die, and keeps the song going, much to M's exasperation. In the build up to Act 4's climax, Boyfriend hits his Rage Breaking Point with Berserker Tears, pissed off at M for taking the love of his life away from him. Boyfriend stretches M's patience so thin by then that the latter forcefully ends the song by killing him with a sneak attack from behind, but at least he goes down fighting M with everything he had.
  • M gets one for successfully killing Boyfriend and Girlfriend on-screen, a feat very few other fan-made characters accomplish, and in gruesome fashion no less. This takes a turn for the tragic when M realizes in the credits song that killing them brought him an encoldening nothing, and is back to being alone again.
• My Real Daddy: Following several poorly-received retools of Turmoil by his owner, the depiction of him in Mario's Madness that shows off his first iteration is now considered by many to be the best and most iconic portrayal of the character.
• Narm:
  • Promotion Mario/Stanley's chromatic scale. It has a rather silly sound to it thanks to its gratuitous "cho" and "san" noises, which, while rather fitting for Promotion Mario, completely clashes with Stanley's serious nature.
  • The V2 version of "Powerdown" features MX shouting lines taken directly from his game of origin. While most of the lines work well enough, MX at one point shouts "GET BACK HERE!"... while both him and Boyfriend are staying completely put.
• Narm Charm: The V1 version of "Powerdown" features MX speaking dialogue from his game of origin, including a bombastic "WAHOO"... in what is perhaps THE most "British Explorer" accent known to man. It's a bit silly, but considering he was inspired by Lord X (who likewise became a bit more goofy in the Sonic.exe mod), this actually sort of fits.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • While the mod generally downplays the scare factor of the featured characters outside of visuals, the main menu is genuinely quite creepy. A black and red, bleak and broken landscape of 1-1, scarred by static and visual glitching. Not helping is the menu music, a slowed-down, distant and muffled rendition of 1-1's level theme that some have compared to an early-stage Caretaker track.
  • Seeing MX tear Girlfriend's body in half in Powerdown can be incredibly shocking for the audience as this doesn't usually happen to her in a mod. Boyfriend could only gawk in horror and tears at his lover's apparent remains. And then MX laughs... because Boyfriend's going to be next if he doesn't start running right then and there.
  • The Downer Ending & its post credits scene also counts due to the fact Boyfriend & Girlfriend died on Ultra M's hands, with Pico following suit.
• Not-So-Cheap Imitation: While Ron J himself can be described as a Nightmare Retardant thanks to his So Bad, It's Good origin creepypasta's bullshit writing and his Mario form being highly unoriginal, the creepypasta became notorious for the ROM Hack version by Roobitz, which made fun of the creepypasta. Even years later, Hazy, one of the composers, got in on the act by making a mock-up song for him called "Murderer", which later turned out to be a troll by Hazy.
• Player Punch:
  • V2 of "Power Down" nears its end on a startling note. In the middle of the song winding down, MX exclaims "INNOCENCE DOESN'T GET YOU FAR", and then gruesomely pulls Girlfriend in half with his bare hands, much to Boyfriend (and likely the player)'s shock. Boyfriend can't do much about it beyond running from MX in the latter's next song, "Demise". Girlfriend thankfully and inexplicably came back to life at some point around the climax of the latter song and flies Boyfriend over a long pit (before letting him go on solid ground once MX resumes his chase).
  • The final song of V2, "All-Stars", gets two brutal punches in:
    • Boyfriend and Girlfriend singing together makes you think they'll both have a fighting chance against Ultra M. Then Ultra M commences Act 2 by kidnapping Girlfriend through the Warp Pipe she and Boyfriend are standing on. After Boyfriend goes through Omega, then LG, W4R and Y0SH, he reaches Act 3... where Girlfriend's horribly butchered and strung-up corpse, remade into GX by Ultra M, greets him. Who he now has to sing against. Just to rub it in, halfway through Act 3, Ultra M lyrically taunts Boyfriend over him being too late to save Girlfriend, and dares him to give up and die.
    • Boyfriend stands tall against Ultra M out of sheer persistence in Act 4, in spite of the latter's shock. Act 4 later quiets down, and Boyfriend thinks about Girlfriend, and reaches his Rage Breaking Point. As the song picks back up, Boyfriend gets Berserker Tears, and it seems like he got his Heroic Second Wind! Ultra M has none of it, however, and soon forcefully ends the song by impaling Boyfriend's chest from behind, killing him off for good (with his life counter even shown ticking down to zero) and ending the mod off on a depressing note.
• Realism-Induced Horror: While some of the more serious characters are horrifying in regards to the supernatural feats they can do to their victims, others are horrifying because they don't need to stretch to fantastical levels on what horrors they exhibit:
  • A major reason behind Turmoil's popularity is the fact that he isn't a demon using a canon character as an avatar, a virus, or a poltergeist. It's the fact that he's an otherwise normal Mario who just so happened to eat a mushroom that essentially turned him into a feral animal that performs some rather... horrifying acts towards creatures on a regular basis. As another person put it, Turmoil's situation is basically rabies, but blown to fucked up proportions.
  • Mr. L gets this to a certain degree. Despite being zigzagged due to the supernatural circumstances that brought him back from death, the lengthy torment he inflicts on his brother as revenge over an Accidental Murder, one that said brother is clearly suffering for to the point it culminates in his death is utterly terrifying and entirely real. To make matters worse? The usual exe or entity usually takes canonical characters as an avatar, but Mr. L? He's still Luigi. No possessions, no demons, no viruses, just a human so driven by The Power of Hate over being the victim of an Accidental Murder that he goes to make his brother's life hell, and continues doing the same for potential victims long after his death, serving as a surprisingly terrifying example on how revenge can destroy your very soul.
  • Compared to all of the other horror characters, being entirely within the Mario universe or monstrous entities, Costume Mario appears to just be an otherwise ordinary murderer dressed up as Mario, entirely possible within real life.
• Scrappy Mechanic: MX’s jumping mechanic is fairly unpopular due to having weird timing and dealing too much damage, leading to unfair deaths. Not helping is the “NOW” prompt distracting players from MX’s position, which is how they actually tell when to dodge. This seems to have rescinded as of V2's release, as not only is the "NOW" prompt is much more noticeable and synced to the music, multiple other songs feature a similar mechanic, leading to players already being prepared ahead of time.
• Tear Jerker:
  • "Overdue" is tense with the frightening Mr. L singing it and Pico having to fight for his life... and then near the end, the music quiets down as a violin starts playing, and Mr. L abruptly sounds surprised about something. Cue TooLate.exe Mario's ghost fading in to defend Pico from Mr. L. In sharp contrast to Mr. L's more harsher and distorted vocals, Mario's ghost sounds human, albeit melancholic. The body language of his moves shows he's lamenting how vicious his brother has now become. His section doesn't last for long and he fades like dust before Pico makes a break for it, but even without the context of the source material, it paints a tragic picture.
  • The mod ends with both Boyfriend and Girlfriend dying in All-Stars. Boyfriend in particular fights on despite crossing the Despair Event Horizon only to die at the end of the song. To makes matters worse, Pico finds their corpses in the post credits scene. One can only imagine what's going on in his head during that moment. And then there's M's reaction in the credit's song: instead of feeling satisfaction from the killings, he realizes that he's still alone with no one else to interact with. Not even the main villain gets a happy ending.
• That One Attack: Most opponents have at least one difficult mechanic in their song.
  • During the second half of It’s-A-Me, poison mushrooms will appear among the player’s note, which cause severe health drain when hit. Even hitting ONE can drain Boyfriend’s health down to a quarter.
  • In the middle of Nourishing Blood, the notes will randomly start bouncing around, making it harder to keep attention on where they are at all times.
  • During Alone, the notes will slowly move from left to right. While still easier to deal with than in Nourishing Blood, it can still be a slight challenge.
  • In I HATE YOU, lava will cover up parts of the screen and your upcoming notes, making it far harder to predict oncoming ones.
  • In Last Course, Turmoil will shoot his tongue out at Boyfriend, which Boyfriend will need to dodge with space. If he doesn’t, the health icons will be forced down about 3/4ths of the bar; If you aren't already far to the left when it happens, Turmoil will instantly kill him.
  • During Bad Day, Super Bad Mario will launch Koopa shells at Boyfriend, dealing some damage each time. He’ll also occasionally place poison mushrooms in the notes, which deal damage if hit.
  • Dictator has Banzai bills among the notes, which take up two note spaces which both need to be hit, otherwise they’ll deal massive damage, with only two being needed to cause an instant death.
  • Race Traitors will have Racist Mario use items against Boyfriend, including a red shell (which hits the healthbar and knocks Boyfriend’s health back), a Boo (which makes the notes transparent), a Bob-Omb (which appear among your notes and deal half your health if hit) and a Mushroom (that increases the scroll speed).
  • Devil Mario in No Hope has a similar mechanic to Turmoil, where he’ll occasionally slash at Boyfriend and take out half of his health, should the player not press space to dodge.
  • No Party has by far the hardest mechanic of the mod. During the song, text will appear on the "touch screen" with the notes that the player will have around 8 seconds to trace. If they don’t trace or they aren’t at all accurate, they’ll die. But even if the player does get enough to survive, they’ll still get knocked down by about a third of their health.
  • Powerdown, as stated above in Scrappy Mechanic, will have MX ground pound, which the player will need to pay attention to and press space to avoid. Failing to dodge the ground pound will result in the player losing a massive chunk of health. Fortunately, a POW block will appear on screen to indicate when MX will ground pound, which makes it a little more manageable.
  • The second half of Promotion will have the player’s notes constantly moving around, including moving up and down or left and right, making it harder to keep track of the notes at all times.
  • During Abandoned, the water level will slowly rise, draining Boyfriend’s health. In order to decrease the water level, the player will need to hit diamonds among the notes. While manageable at lower frame rates, higher ones in the hundreds result in the water rising too fast to handle, to the point where even hitting every diamond won’t guarantee safety... or just flat out be impossible. 2 years of development and Mario's Madness V2 never actually noticed that issue until too late.
  • The Superboss "Unbeatable" has three difficult health-draining mechanics to manage at various points in the song, but one that poses even more trouble appears during Act 1; near the end of said act, when the strumline is forced into middlescroll and Mr. Sys' heads appear at the screen's sides, you cannot miss a single note or you instantly die. While thankfully only appearing early in the Marathon Level of a song, it can be a tough hurdle to get past.
• That One Level:
  • Of all the new songs introduced in V2, "No Party" is by far the hardest. In spite of a relatively standard chart, the mechanic in the song is easily the hardest of the mod. During the song, the player will need to trace words within a certain time, or else they’ll die. Sounds fine, right? Wrong. Not only will there very often be notes coming up when you’re tracing, which’ll guarantee a few misses, and not only are you forced to trade with your cursor, which can often slip up or not press down properly, but even getting 50% or higher will result in DJ Hallyboo lowering your health by a significant amount. Combine that with the lack of notes on the opponent’s side, making it harder to predict the notes, and the unique screen size potentially being disorienting, and you get a torturous song that, as the name implies, is no party.
  • Worse: The fact that No Party's mechanic still drains you health may induce you in error the first time you see it, making you think that you should not write apologies... until you're completely lost because you never actually know how to handle the mechanic until you look up on You Tube and realize that trying to write the apologies was not a bad strategy at all.
  • Additionally, V2 introduces "MARIO SING AND GAME RYTHM 9". Despite being one of the first songs in the mod, being the final level of the first world, its mechanic is among one of the hardest. Similar to an actual Sonic game like the original bootleg was built on, you have to collect rings in order to survive, and the player gets a game over if they miss without a ring on hand. However, missing causes ALL of your rings to spill out, and the song is fairly note-dense. Those two factors mean that you have to play near flawlessly or rely on Luigi just to get through it.
  • Abandoned can easily reach into this territory depending on your frame rate. The charting isn’t as bad as some of the other songs, but its mechanic more than makes up for it. The area the song takes place in slowly floods as the song goes on, which results in health drain that gets more severe the higher the water level is, and can be decreased by hitting diamond notes. At lower frame rates, this is fairly manageable as the water doesn’t rise too fast. But at higher frame rate, the water rises at incredibly high speeds. You can hit all the diamonds in the song, and still end up dying because the water recovers its height prior to the diamond about as fast as it took to hit the note.
• Unexpected Character:
  • You'd expect the secret level of V1 to be as creepy as the rest, right? Or a well-known meme character like Speedrunner Mario or SMG4 Mario? Instead, it features Racist Mario — a character that isn't even from a creepypasta, but rather a very vulgar animated parody of Mario Kart of the same name. Subverted in V2, where he is both no longer a secret and is accompanied by many other characters from similar origins.
  • Nobody even expected an EXE of Yoshi appearing.
  • Many people were surprised by the inclusion of Costume Mario, a character who only appears for a single scene whilst being barely visible, without any explanation for what it is.
  • After you beat the story, heading back to Hellish Heights would greet you with the infamous low-polygon characters in the one Nintendo commercial with this moniker: "You Cannot Beat Us".
• The Woobie:
  • Beta Luigi. He comes from a timeline where The Bad Guy Wins and King Boo traps his brother for seemingly forever. His body language shows how sad and upset he is, with him barely moving at all, and he’s implied to be suicidal. No wonder he crossed the Despair Event Horizon.
  • Stanley is a self-aware Artificial Intelligence suffering a great deal of guilt and anguish as he knows he has been programmed to be a living weapon, but wants none of it despite seemingly being unable to rebel himself. He's constantly shown as being trapped and lonely within the castle halls, poked at by someone who sees him as a test subject more than a human and always living in the shadow of an incident that deleted L is Real Luigi. It's easy to see why he's indicated to be suicidal, with his semi-frequent imagery of dying civilians and a castle in ruins an obvious Self-Harm metaphor.
  • Luigi’s Day Out Luigi is forced to go along with his brother's antics after his mother thought it would be nice to have him join Mario in his quest to save Peach, resulting in him getting hurt in various ways, such as getting attacked by the sun, falling down a pit, or getting blown up. Luckily he trips Mario, causing him to fall down a flight of stairs, so karma does do its work.
  • Boyfriend, Girlfriend, and Pico become this. Especially by the end of the mod. All three of them were pulled into a cursed game for reasons that weren't even their fault and forced to fight through various Mario-themed horrors. Boyfriend and Girlfriend themselves are terrified when Girlfriend's demon powers are ineffective and all they can do is fight fruitlessly for their lives. Despite their best efforts, Girlfriend meets her demise halfway through All-Stars and becomes M's puppet, pushing Boyfriend beyond the Despair Event Horizon before being killed himself. By the end of the mod, Pico is the only survivor and witnesses their dead bodies while in fear for his own life.

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